


wipe the blood from your face & your hands

by sapphicTechnician



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1495414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicTechnician/pseuds/sapphicTechnician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd made it sound easy. It's not. He is so very, very tired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wipe the blood from your face & your hands

**Author's Note:**

> A what-if of chapter 53 in which it's not achieving crystallization that's the problem, it's everything that comes after. Eren's tired and Levi doesn't have much sympathy and nothing is easy, because when is anything ever easy?

He swims up to awareness through a sea of black that doesn’t get any lighter as he nears the surface. Someone is tugging on his shoulders; their fingers slip and scrabble for purchase. He thinks he can hear cloth rip. Scratch another shirt. When he opens his mouth to gasp in a breath his chest constricts painfully and he coughs instead, great hacking coughs that threaten to send him under again.  
  
“Easy” someone says, “okay, easy. You’re fine. You’re fine.” But he’s not. He can’t breathe and he can’t see and he can’t move and he’s about as far away from fine as he’s ever been. He snaps his head back and it cracks against something hard and unyielding. He doesn’t see stars. It still hurts.  
  
“Shit,” someone else says, but quietly. “ _Fuck._ ” This time, when he jerks his head back there’s something different under it. Soft and firm at the same time. Fingers in his hair. It doesn’t matter. The third time sends him spiraling back under the darkness.  
  
\---  
  
 _Mikasa will die when she swings in to save him the way she always has, swords flashing as she dives for the neck of a Titan he hasn’t even noticed. He will have enough time to turn before the slice of flesh goes winging into the dirt and the body crumbles, enough time to curse himself for being slow before the second Titan will rise up in a cloud of steam and bat at her almost lazily. The massive hand will fling her against a tree and Eren will hear the crack of her skull, watch her eyes widen slightly in the moments before her brain knows it’s dead, watch her breath stop as she slides almost gracefully towards the ground._  
   
\---  
  
He wakes to someone pressing a cup of water to his lips. It's sweet and cool and good and he gulps at it frantically. Too fast; he half-coughs and half-retches most of it back up, almost crying with frustration. The cup is taken away. He licks at his lips for whatever's left. It tastes like bile.  
      
Someone else nearby makes a disgusted noise. "For fuck's sake, Yeager. Have a little dignity." Levi. Probably. Almost certainly. Eren can't see him. Eren can't see much of anything.  
  
"Something's wrong with my eyes," he rasps. His head is too heavy. There's dampness on his face. Water or blood or vomit, he can't tell. Everything smells of rotting meat.  
  
"Yeah," Levi says. "They're mostly not there anymore."  
  
Eren's voice cracks when he says "Help me," and, " _Please_ ," and he can't even hate himself for pleading because everything hurts so bad and something's wrong, something big, something he can't figure out. In the edges of his mind, in the corner of his ruined eyes. Something he's forgotten.  
  
Levi doesn't answer.  
  
\---  
  
 _Armin will die when a small Titan, barely six meters, swats him off his horse like a rag doll. He will flip over and over on the rough ground until he fetches up against the base of a tree but he will be dead by then, neck snapped and spine shattered into a thousand puzzle pieces, skin ripped from his body to leave gaping areas of reddened flesh which will never get a chance to bleed. They will not be able to reclaim his body. The flies will take it, and the small things which eat the dead, and his bones will mark the passing of their arrogance._  
  
\---  
  
Consciousness fades in and out. He's not sure how long he's been here. It's darker, maybe, than it used to be. Cooler. Or he is. None of his limbs want to move. He's trapped, he realizes suddenly, the thought flashing across his mind like a beacon, he's trapped and someone's in trouble, something's happening, he has to move--  
  
"That's right, Yeager. Fight it. Come on." Levi sounds strange. Eren struggles harder, chokes on a scream. It's not working. He's so goddamn tired. He can't. But he has too.  
  
Finally, something rips free with a sound like splintering glass. One of his arms. It feels strange, wrong, too light but it works and that means he can get out of here, he can fix this. The overwhelming sense of danger is still screaming in his ears and he doesn't think he has his 3DMG, isn't even sure he could use it but that's not the only weapon at his disposal.  
  
"Oh, no. Don't you dare, don't you fucking dare you fucking shitty _brat_ \--"  
  
Eren's teeth close over his thumb. They bounce off bone in a way that he dimly registers as not quite right but the shock of pain is there and it is all he needs. It is all he has ever needed.  
  
It doesn’t work.  
  
\---  
  
 _Jean will die when a sixteen-meter plucks him off his branch without a second thought. He will be low enough on gas to be trying to conserve his energy, spend less time in the air but it will be the end of him. He will struggle in the Titan’s hand, try to draw a sword but he will not have time and Eren will still be fifty, sixty meters away and flying when the massive teeth will crunch down so that everything spills out, the blood and strange wet  things which keep a person alive trickling over the Titan’s knuckles. He will drop the remainder of the body, the legs and swords still sheathed, the loops of steaming bowel, and Eren will be on him the next second and he will fall the second after that, but Jean will still be dead._  
  
\---  
  
This time, the return of his awareness brings with it enough of his vision to see the crystal. It doesn’t look like Annie’s. It’s pitted and strange and streaked with blood and half-sunk into the meat of his Titan, locking him in place. His head and his right arm are the only parts which are free, and his arm is mostly splinters and meat anyhow. Levi won’t look at it. Eren doesn’t blame him.  
   
“You got yourself in there,” Levi says. “You can get yourself out.” He’s a pale smudge against a green background. Eren can’t see his face. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He can’t remember. He’s exhausted in a way that’s bone-deep and painful and all he wants to do is close his eyes and sleep.  
  
But he can’t close his eyes. No eyelids, he thinks. His thoughts are spiraling, circling. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t know that he can.  
  
\---  
  
 _Sasha will die underfoot, like dirt. Like a thing of no importance, her lines will tangle and send her stumbling to the forest floor where the foot will come down without even seeing her and split her like a ripe peach. She will be almost impossible to identify. It is the wrong death for her, for someone who has done all she has and showed her strength and courage, but it will be her death nonetheless._  
  
\---  
  
"Cut me out," he whispers, begs. His vision is smudged, but in a way he can’t blame completely on the damage, can feel the tears on his cheeks. He still can't take a deep breath. Levi is crouched next to him with his swords out, but he makes no move to use them. "Please. Just. Cut me out."  
  
"I can't," Levi says. Maybe it should sound like he's mocking Eren but it doesn't, it just sounds like a sad fact. "This one's all on you, kid."  
  
Eren laughs or maybe sobs, or maybe both. Whatever it is it catches in his throat and feels like it tears something, more copper flooding his teeth. He opens his mouth, lets it dribble out. Levi shifts a little further away. His boots on the crystal make a strange sound, like someone tapping a wineglass.  
  
Eren finds that his eyes can close, now. He squeezes them shut. The darkness behind his eyelids explodes in bursting colors, and when he blinks the world around him is far too bright.  
  
\---  
  
 _Connie will die in the air, swallowed whole. He will miscalculate a distance and the Titan will jump, which they’re not supposed to do but Eren has seen it before and this one has it timed perfectly. He will disappear into the thing’s gullet without even enough time to scream, and by the time the Titan falls and Eren can hack into its stomach he will be long dead, flesh falling from bones boiled in the blood of a hundred other victims. He will have suffered. This, Eren knows._  
  
-  
  
"Just do it," he says flatly. His mouth is acid and ashes. He can feel himself shaking, skin twitching like a horse trying to shake off a fly. Involuntary or maybe he's too tired to care. The world blurs in and out of darkness. He doesn’t know how long he’s been trying. He doesn’t care anymore. “I’ll probably heal.”  
  
Levi hits him. It's an open-palm slap to one cheek and it somehow, paradoxically, hurts worse than a punch. "Concentrate," he says, and, "Try again."  
  
"Fuck you," Eren snaps. It lacks heat. The heat is in his skin, rising like steam. With steam. He's cold. "I _can't_."  
  
Levi hits him again.  
  
\---  
  
 _Historia will die when her line snaps and sends her hurtling downwards. She will try to catch herself but a Titan will get there first, holding out a palm to block her fall. Her legs will snap against its skin and she will scream, but not for long. The Titan will close its fist. Eren’s blades will take its fingers but not quite in time, and the thing which completes its journey to the green earth will no longer be recognizable as a human. They will burn her where she falls. There will not even be enough left to bury._  
  
\---  
  
In the distance, he thinks he can hear Mikasa yelling at someone. The sun is going down over the hills, disappearing behind the trees. The periods of lucidity are getting longer. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad, just knows that with the exception of his arm he’s still encased nearly up to his neck and no closer to fighting his way free. If he cranes his neck backwards he can see wisps of smoke from the rest of the group, camped nearby.  
  
“We moved them to a safe distance,” Levi mutters. He’s sitting with his knees drawn up, chin resting on them. He looks about as tired as Eren feels. “In case anything happened.”  
  
In case Eren lost control. More than he already has, anyway. “Hange must be pissed,” he says.  
  
Levi’s lips twist. Maybe it’s a smile. Maybe not. “And the sooner you figure out how to get the rest of your ass out of there, the sooner I can hand you over and get a fucking shower.”  
  
It always comes back to this. Eren’s chest hurts when he tilts his head back. Probably because he hasn’t been able to get a proper lungful of air since he turned back. “I’m trying,” he tells the sky.  
  
“Well,” Levi says. “Try harder.”  
  
\---  
  
 _Hange will die slowly. The Titan which will catch them is slow and stupid, and it will have no time to pull off more than two limbs before it is killed. They will bleed out in great slow gushes all over Eren’s hands, and theywill try to reassure him before the pain whites out their mind and they scream instead. They will not want to die; they will fight until the end. They will not win._  
  
\---  
  
The stars are coming out. Levi is a dark shape against their light, huddled in a cloak. Eren can’t see the firelight anymore. That’s good. Safer that way.  
  
“You got your arm out.” Levi’s voice is expressionless and Eren can’t see his face. “Just do whatever you did before.”  
  
The arm is healing slowly. Steam rises from it, has been most of this time. The fingers are pretty much back. The elbow joint works. The skin’s still missing but on the whole, that’s not really such a big problem. Eren tries to think back. He remembers being panicked and he remembers being scared, thinking something was wrong. There was danger. He needed to protect everyone. He needed to protect someone.   
  
“You’re no better than Annie,” Levi says apropos of nothing and it startles Eren out of his thoughts, leaves him grasping for what might have been important. “At least she had reasons to want to hide.”  
  
The accusation stings. “I don’t fucking want this,” Eren says. His throat is raw. He’s been healing for hours and he can still taste blood, salt-sweet on the back of his tongue.  
  
“You’d be stupid not to, Yeager.” It’s hard to tell but he doesn’t think Levi’s looking at him. “Sleep out the rest of the war where no one can touch you and still have people call you a hero? It’s every soldier’s wet dream.”  
  
“I can’t, though.” The night breeze stings on the exposed nerves of the new arm. Eren grinds his teeth. “I have to protect them.” Faces in his mind, dreams, Mikasa darting through the treetops until a Titan swats her down, Armin kicked from his horse to lie too still at the base of a tree, Jean bitten in half. Connie boiled alive. Sasha and Historia crushed, Hange torn to pieces.  “I have to.”  
  
“You having to isn’t the same as you wanting to,” Levi says. He pushes himself up before Eren can respond. “But shit, I’m no fucking therapist. What the hell do I know.” He leaps lightly down to the ground; he lands in a half crouch and takes a moment to flip up his hood before walking away. He looks very small. More so than usual, Eren thinks. There’s an echo of a limp in the way he steps. The darkness swallows him, and the first things to fade from view are the thin silhouettes of his swords.  
  
The crystal shatters with a soft noise, like breaking glass or metal meeting skin. Eren hits the ground on all fours, gasps in a desperate breath and smells soap, rubbing alcohol, machine oil. Levi’s cloak settles around his shoulders.  
  
“I want to,” Eren says thickly, his mouth is full of liquid copper and he is so tired but this, at least, he knows.  
  
And Levi says, “Yes.”  
  
\---  
  
 _Levi won’t die._  



End file.
